Business & Leadership

This course provides students with an introduction to the art and science of the leadership process. It is not limited to business leadership. Topics include organizational culture and climate, motivation, performance, power, tactics, ethics and values, personality traits, and intelligence. Students develop skills necessary to effectively analyze historical, contemporary, and even fictional leadership case studies. A primary aim is to help prepare students to meet the challenges of "life’s leadership situations."

Marketing research is the common currency in modern business practices as business and marketing decisions rely on research to make informed choices. This course helps students: explore the critical role of marketing research in business; learn the language of marketing research; learn how to design and implement a research plan using key marketing research techniques (e.g., surveys, experiments, focus groups); analyze and interpret marketing research data; and report the results of marketing research. Students develop skills in research design, data collection, statistical data analysis, and communication of results through hands-on experience.

This course begins with a macroeconomic perspective and introduces students to international financial markets. Students examine the economic and governmental factors that influence exchange rates and study currency derivatives which are commonly traded to profit from or hedge against expected changes in foreign currencies. The perspective is then microeconomic. Students examine financial issues faced by managers of firms that are engaged in international business. These include: the measurement and management of exchange rate risk, multinational capital budgeting, and the assessment of both domestic and foreign sources of funds to finance long-term projects. Current issues in the international market and real-life problems in decision oriented cases are analyzed.

This course introduces students to the business environments and practices of Latin America. The countries of this region are viable trading partners and destinations for foreign direct investment, and the course considers pertinent historical, cultural, macro-economic and political factors that impact business activity in the region. The course focuses on business opportunity and risk assessment, and introduces students to appropriate managerial, organizational, and strategic planning skills and methods for successfully doing and growing business in the region. The course relies on various teaching methods, including lectures, readings, case studies, class discussions, videos, independent research, and guest presentations.

Arts organizations and artists face many challenges that could benefit from an entrepreneurial mindset. Entrepreneurial thinking requires focusing primarily on finding the right questions rather than finding the right answers. In this course, students develop an entrepreneurial mindset by focusing on an issue in a local arts organization, identifying the concepts that help them understand the issue, de-constructing and re-constructing their knowledge, and creating a feasibility study that tests their potential solution against reality. Students work to develop solutions that local organizations and artists are truly interested in implementing: The classroom learning directly benefits the arts. Topics covered in this course include entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial mindset, questioning, interviewing and analysis, research, feasibility studies, and presenting findings. These topics are covered through readings, interaction with community arts organizations and artists, class activities and discussion, and students’ hard work.